Frustration and Ego Deflation: the GT4 Won't be Ready for the Show

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

Like many automotive journalists, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends. One lit wick represents my columns, including “Sound Classics” and “Sam Barer’s Four Wheel Drift”. The other side has been a napalm blaze to get the infamous Craigslist 1976 Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 back on the road for this weekend’s All-Italian car show at the XXX Rootbeer in Issaquah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know…the 308 GT4 was going to be back on the road in February. After ripping it apart and getting all necessary parts in January and February, I got sidetracked…Work started in earnest to put it back together last week.

Continue reading after the jump!

I called for “all hands on deck” from my friends, and we spent uncounted hours toiling in the shop this week to get the timing belts changed, set valve timing, and refit assorted covers secured by the thousands of little nuts and bolts. Last night we started her up to set timing and tune those four Webers.

Turn the key and …it started!!! YEAH!!! Of course, it sounded like a misfiring Beetle with a bad case of COPD. Out came the multi-tester to figure out which wiring was correct: the shop manual, the OEM-coil wiring diagram or the previous owner’s guess. Since we were looking at two coils, two ballast resistors, and two distributors – each containing two sets of points inside (one for retard, another for standard running), this wasn’t a cake walk.

Like Tommy’s wicked Uncle Ernie, we fiddled about…that was until we noticed the increasing pool of oil under the car. A stream of dinosaur essence began pouring from the lower edge of the cam cover. And just like that, our automotive equivalent of the Exxon Valdez stopped us dead in our tracks.

Deflated and frustrated, this morning I went into the shop again to clean up the oil-dry and lick my wounds. Luckily we never lost full oil pressure, but don’t expect to see the GT4 at the show.

It is times like this that it’s hard to even think about working on the car again for a while. I’ll take the weekend off and hopefully return with a new sense of purpose and drive to get the Ferrari running ASAP.

So what is your best missed deadline and deflated ego story…and did it have an eventual happy ending?